I know, you guys have been exceedingly patient -- you always are. I've fallen very much in love with writing again, found my groove, found the narrative character voice needed to get a chapter from my brain to the page, and it's been a huge relief. But right now, that's not going to be applied to Atonement, and it has nothing at all to do with a lack of desire to write it. If you've read the wee preview for the next chapter, you'll know that it's about Claire and Jamie's much-desired pregnancy. I want to give them that so much. But also, I just had two very desired pregnancies myself, back to back... one ending in an early miscarriage, the second ending up in my fallopian tube, which burst, and needed emergency surgery.

So I'm just not in the place to be writing a pregnancy right at the moment. I will get there. I will hopefully get there because -- after yet another IVF egg retrieval and embryo transfer -- I'll be successfully and happily and safely pregnant myself. That's the goal, obviously. But even if that doesn't work out, I know from experience (not my first pregnancy losses, sadly) that the ache eases with time, and it won't be such an immediate hurt that I can't separate myself from it. You'll get your happy ending, and so will Atonement!Jamie and Claire. Pinky promise.

“Strange how I fit into you / There’s a distance erased with the greatest of ease / Strange how you fit into me / A gentle warmth filling the deepest of needs”

• ATONEMENT | dedicated to @smashing-teacups and her heart-breakingly beautiful fanfic of the same name •

1. At This Point In My Life - Tracy Chapman || 2. Eric’s Song - Vienna Teng || 3. How the Day Sounds - Greg Laswell || 4. Please Don’t Say You Love Me - Gabrielle Aplin || 5. Ghosts That We Knew - Mumford & Sons || 6. Distance - Christina Perri || 7. I’ll Keep You Safe - Sleeping At Last || 8. Sky Blue and Black (Acoustic) - Jackson Browne || 9. Your Beating Heart - Brendan James || 10. No Light, No Light - Florence + the Machine || 11. Colorblind - Counting Crows || 12. Rescue - Lauren Daigle || 13. Rose of Sharon - Mumford & Sons || 14. Since You’ve Been Around - Rosie Thomas || 15. Dust to Dust - The Civil Wars || 16. Everything - Lifehouse || 17. 18th Floor Balcony - Blue October || 18. Cherry Wine - Hozier || 19. Turning Page - Sleeping At Last || 20. Moondust - Jaymes Young || 21. [Bonus Wedding Track] Who We Are - Tristan Prettyman || 22. [Bonus Wedding Track] Arithmetic - Brook Fraser 

It was Buck Mackenzie who finally summoned the courage to address the proverbial elephant in the room. Breakfast, to that point, had been spent in a collective, stunned silence, punctuated only by the occasional clink of spoons.

“Aye, well. S’pose I’ll be the one to ask, then, shall I?” he offered abruptly. All eyes around the campfire moved in unison from his face to mine, and I nodded, humming earnest approval around a mouthful of parritch.

Much like his father before him, he wasn’t one to mince words. “What… are ye, exactly?”

I managed, with no small effort, to move the glob of paste to the back of my mouth and swallow. “How do you mean?”

Buck’s blue eyes darted about in search of aid. Finding none, he expounded with a bit more reluctance, “Beggin’ yer pardon, mistress, but t’isnae a mere mortal can raise a man from the dead.” 

“Nor walk through solid stone,” Jamie warned, his glare lethal, “yet here ye are.”

Even as Buck raised a palm in concession, Young Ian chimed in to his left. “He’s right, Uncle. We’ve a fair number of time travelers among us, and none of them can do what Auntie did.”

I took a moment to study the faces of each of the three men sitting with us before meeting my husband’s gaze. An entire conversation passed unspoken between us as we tried to decide who should speak and what we should share. Jamie was afraid, and that fear made him want to keep his cards close to his chest until we had more answers. While I understood his reservations, I also recognized that we might never know more — and our loved ones deserved honesty, particularly if we were asking for their help. 

He didn’t like it, but he dropped his gaze to his parritch nonetheless, two fingers tapping restlessly on the side of the bowl.

“I’m not sure if there is a name for a person with my… ability,” I began slowly and carefully, shifting my focus back to Ian. “But you’re right that it’s something separate from the time travel, or… well, at least it’s not necessarily part of the trait. I’ve only ever known one other person who could do this, and I’m not even sure if he was a traveler.”

All three sets of eyebrows raised at that, though it was Roger who clarified this time: “You’ve known someone else who could raise the dead?”

Time had been such a convoluted thing since the day we’d left the Ridge, and none the simpler for the wee matter of my death.

When I dredged myself up from the muck of a black and dreamless sleep, my pocketwatch wasn’t to hand — still tucked away in my sporran somewhere, strewn haphazardly about the tent with the rest of our clothes. I hadn’t any idea of the hour, but birdsong drifted sweetly through the trees overhead, and the light filtering through the canvas was the soft rose-gold of morning. 

We’d slept through a full day and night, then, at the least. 

Claire had been tucked into the same position all the while, even when I rolled one way or the other. Her joints wouldn’t thank her for it — neither had mine after Monmouth, when I’d slept propped between two chairs or on the floor beside her bed. Here, at least, the two of us fit on the cot together.

And this time, there was no bullet wound to avoid.

That was my first marvel, upon waking. I didn’t know what I expected to find… perhaps a freshly-scabbed pock like the birdshot had left, or even something akin to a burn where she’d seared the hole shut. But there was nothing: no trace of injury old or new, no indication whatsoever that I’d taken a bullet to the heart. Eyes narrowed, I grazed my fingertips back and forth over the unbroken skin, then probed a bit harder, testing. The muscle ached as though I’d worked too many hours splitting wood or hammering at a forge, but otherwise—

Evidently, my poking and prodding were more disruptive than I meant; inhaling a deep breath through her nose, Claire nuzzled into my ribs, then shifted her head to peer up at me.

Her beautiful… snow white head.

Jamie Fraser, 1944

When I woke from my first sleep since the battle — real sleep, not anaesthesia-induced unconsciousness — a wisp of brown curl slowly came into focus. The rest of Claire’s hair was smoothed into a prim updo befitting her rank and role, but just there, just over her right ear, a single rebellious coil stuck straight out from her head. Still half asleep, I smiled, my heart glowing sun-warm with tenderness.

Christ, and to think that I had first believed her to be a dream… as if my imagination could ever have conjured such exquisite detail, transforming the friend of my childhood into the one before me now. Visions of her had come to me so often during the war, when I was wounded or frightened, when I knew I must do something as a soldier that twisted my gut with shame. But it had always been the face of a lassie in my mind’s eye, and the golden-eyed nurse who’d found me was a woman grown — so similar to her adolescent self that I’d recognized her at once, but changed in a hundred subtle ways I couldn’t even begin to name.

None of that had registered in my morphine-addled brain, though. It wasn’t until Claire’s comically unexpected outburst of profanity that I knew her to be real. She’d been right, too, to no one’s surprise more than mine: somehow, impossibly, I’d survived ‘til morning. I couldn’t see a great deal from where I was, face-down in a cot at the back of a tent, but the light peeking in through the gaps in the canvas at least told me that much.

Not daring to move, I tried to take stock of my body in the rare moment of lucidity without overwhelming pain. I didn’t feel a full bladder the way I usually did when I woke; I reckoned that meant I had a catheter of some kind. Frightened by the implication, I moved my toes just to check that I could… not paralyzed, then, thank God. I could still see, hear, smell, touch, taste — though the last was no great mercy at the moment. Kind as Claire had been to swab out my mouth, it was still gritty and sour, my throat raw from the breathing tube they’d used in surgery. I winced on a swallow, moving my tongue about to try to ease any bit of moisture into a cavern composed of sandpaper. With only that minuscule bit of sound and movement, the curly head before me shifted once, then suddenly bolted up.

“Are you alright?” Claire sniffed awake. 

Unsure if I had any voice to answer, I grunted first, then managed hoarsely, “I’m here. S… tha’s… something.”

The alarm in her face eased as she looked me over; slowly, her expression gentled into fondness — a teasing smile, a raised brow. “Is it too early for ‘I told you so’?”

I wasn’t sure if I managed a smile in return, but I felt it warm my gaze, at least. “No one likes a braggart, Claire.”

Claire Beauchamp, 1944

I heard the commotion at the other end of the hospital tent — would’ve had to have been bloody deaf to miss it — but didn’t rush over straight away. I had my own set of patients to attend to, and was right in the middle of dressing a shrapnel wound to the leg when I heard raised voices. Marthe had that section, and I knew she could handle herself, so I barely cast a curious glance in that direction before reassuring my patient that I was almost finished.

“I understand that you are upset, monsieur, but I cannot allow you to—” 

Suddenly there was a great crash and a metal clang, and that brought me abruptly to my feet. Violence against nurses was unfortunately all too common, especially when soldiers were delirious from infection or analgesics. If she needed help restraining someone, I was strong and capable.

“What’s going on?” I called, already halfway down the aisle when I saw a soldier on his feet, hands braced on Marthe’s shoulders, though I couldn’t tell if he was holding onto her for balance or trying to harm her. Breaking into a run, I called out again, but Marthe only turned to glance at me imploringly.

“I am ‘aving a ‘ard time understanding ‘is accent,” she explained as I reached them.

Scowling, the patient lapsed into perfect French and told her she should have said so. Marthe blinked in surprise, but had barely begun to apologize when I cut in.

“I’m rather good with accents. Tell me what the matter is, soldier.”

“I need to get to the surgical tent,” he explained in what was, to Marthe’s credit, quite a thick Highland brogue. At once, my heart softened by a degree, as it always did when I met a Scot. “My friend was badly wounded by an S-mine, and I need to see him. Please. They’ve no’ let me leave this bed and it’s been three days now.”

Subtly, Marthe touched my arm and managed to direct my attention downward from the soldier’s beseeching face to the bandaged, amputated knee hanging beneath him. It seemed the poor fellow’s friend hadn’t been the only one struck by the goddamned Bouncing Betty. They were horrific death machines, time-delayed by four seconds before springing into the air and discharging hundreds of bullets and shrapnel right at waist level. 

“First thing’s first, I need you to sit down,” I told him kindly but firmly, and before he could even draw a breath to object, I pointed out, “If you rip open your stitches, the doctor won’t let me take you anywhere. Let me get a look at that leg, and then we’ll try to find out more about your friend. Agreed?”

The Scot looked for a moment as though he might cry, but nodded in resignation and sank slowly back down onto his cot. As I knelt in front of him, assessing the white linen bandage for blood, Marthe and I spoke quietly and agreed to swap assignments. It was clear that this man was not dangerous, only desperate, but it was always better if we could keep the tent peaceful; we were already asking these poor chaps to heal in a field hospital miles from home, so the least we could do was avoid disruption.

“What’s your name, soldier?” I asked as I began to unwrap his bandage to check the sutures.

“Lance Corporal Murray, ma’am.”

“First Lieutenant Beauchamp,” I returned, and glanced up with a weak flicker of a smile. “But you can call me Claire.”